Chapter 3178: The Detective Shall Die (Part 40)

When Joker demanded the little girl continue to point people out, she wanted to point at her sister-in-law again, but Joker informed her that if she were to be electrocuted again, she might lose her life. The little girl hesitated for a moment and could only point at one of her brothers.

The second brother who was pointed out cursed loudly. Besides cursing the little girl, he also cursed his father and eldest brother, and even his sister-in-law, telling her she might as well just go die.

In the next two rounds, the little girl pointed at her eldest brother and father respectively. They also cursed loudly; at first, they would curse the little girl, but later they began to curse each other.

From the vocabulary they used to insult each other, Shiler could hear that the men in this family were each uniquely bizarre.

Since being kicked out of his team, Huff had been addicted to gambling. The eldest brother had been counter-killed by someone while bullying others at school, resulting in a broken leg that still left him with a limp. The second brother loved petty theft the most; not only did he go out to steal things, but he also stole money from home, and if he couldn't get money from his mother, he would beat her.

The only truly innocent ones in this family are the grandfather and the mother; they are also the people who are best to the little girl.

After electrocuting the others, Joker demanded the little girl continue to point people out, but the little girl refused to do anything more. Even when Joker threatened to kill her, she firmly refused to point at her mother and grandfather.

If it were an ordinary murderer, by this stage, they would either make the little girl watch them electrocute her beloved relatives or kill the little girl in front of them.

But Joker was no ordinary person. He praised the little girl with great surprise and said, "Fantastic! Little Jenny! I am precisely trying to teach you this principle: if you don't want to do something, then firmly refuse!"

"Your refusal won them the victory. Alright, the game is over now, your family can be reunited. I will release them now."

What happened next was predictable.

The physical fitness of adult males is relatively better, so even though the electric current caused them massive damage, it still did not affect their mobility, and there would be a short period of excitement after being electrocuted.

They rushed toward Jenny like madmen, wanting to kill her because Jenny had not refused, which had caused them such immense pain.

More importantly, their dignity had been provoked.

From the structure of the Huff family, one could see that they were a very traditional type of family: men worked outside, and women stayed home to raise children. Even when the family was impoverished to this extent, they did not want their women to go out to work.

Yet in this game, their roles were reversed; the weakest person who needed the most protection became the judge who could decide the life and death of others.

The mother and the elderly grandfather, who had always been at the bottom of the family hierarchy, escaped the disaster, while the men who usually acted arrogantly and had the final say at home suffered a fatal blow, making a fool of themselves.

They believed they had lost their dignity and absolutely could not tolerate such humiliation; anger consumed their hearts.

However, they were not people who usually faced difficulties head-on, otherwise, they wouldn't have lived their lives like this. They were accustomed to wielding knives against those weaker than themselves, actively ignoring who the culprit of all this was, and intended to teach those who had no ability to resist a lesson.

Fresh blood stained the screen.

After the video ended, neither Batman nor Shiler spoke.

"How was it?" Shiler asked.

"Too many problems," Batman said. "I don't know where to start."

"Oh?" Shiler looked at him with some interest and said, "To make you say that, it seems the problem is indeed very large."

"The biggest problem is Jenny." Batman looked at the blood-red screen. He reached out and used the mouse to drag the progress bar back to the beginning, freezing the frame on the first close-up of the little girl, Jenny.

This little girl named Jenny did not actually look very delicate or cute; at a glance, she was a rural girl often exposed to wind and sun, and her hair was a bit messy, but she had a pair of large brown eyes that looked very spirited.

"She is too calm," Batman said.

Shiler, of course, had also noticed this point. It could be said that from the moment Joker appeared until the Huff family began to kill each other, Jenny had never cried from start to finish, nor did she have any special fearful emotions; basically, she did whatever Joker told her to do.

This was very contrary to common sense. For a little girl of only 6 years old to encounter such a change, being able to say a complete sentence would count as having drunk too little Mengpo Soup and not having forgotten it completely.

You have to know, even for Batman when he was a child, after his parents met with an accident, his first reaction was to cry; this is what normal human psychology and emotion are.

Even if this little girl named Jenny was a peerless genius who could stabilize her emotions in such a terrifying situation, the comprehension ability she displayed was still a bit too exaggerated.

Perhaps for an adult, such a scene is not very complicated, but for a little girl of only 6 years old, there should be too many things in this scene that she cannot understand.

This village is very remote and has no internet access; it is estimated that they cannot even receive many TV stations. Growing up in such an environment, a little girl could not have had much exposure.

She would definitely be very confused as to why her family members were fixed to chairs, because she might not understand at all what "kidnapping" is.

She would also find it difficult to understand why Joker wanted her to point at someone, because she didn't know at all what a serial killer, home invasion, or psychopath was.

It was even more impossible for her to understand what the torture device Joker brought out was, why when it was pressed against someone, the other party would scream, nor could she understand the meaning contained in the cursing of her family members, because many things were too profound for her.

Humans are always limited by their own knowledge base. This 6-year-old little girl named Jenny, in her short life, could have come into contact with too few things, so naturally, the things she didn't understand would become many.

But she didn't ask anything during the whole process; she did whatever Joker told her to do, had no curiosity about everything that was happening, and had no fear, as if she had long known what would happen.

This did not look like the reaction a rural little girl should have.

A normal child encountering such a thing would either cry loudly and be unable to say a word, or even if they didn't dare to cry, they wouldn't dare to do anything at all, wanting to find their dad one moment and their mom the next.

Even if it wasn't in such a dangerous situation, and it really was just playing a similar game, children of this age group rarely could concentrate for such a long time; it was impossible for what they said, what they did, and the reactions they presented to not go off-topic at all.

But Jenny did it.

This made Shiler very suspicious of her identity, because he remembered Batman saying before that when that lost goat disappeared, only little Jenny knew the direction it disappeared in.

If there hadn't been this clue, the Huff family couldn't have followed that direction to find the goat's carcass, and naturally, they wouldn't have eaten any goat meat.

Could Jenny have deliberately let the goat go, leading the Huff family to a certain place, and then tampered with the goat meat, which made the Huff family go crazy?

No, Shiler thought of another possibility: the goat and so on might just be a smokescreen. After all, looking at the video, the Huff family's linguistic logic was normal, and their various emotional reactions were also very natural; there was no sign of any madness.

Then the matter of the Huff family going crazy after eating goat meat might be a rumor, but they were driven out by others in the village, which must be because the villagers saw something that made them feel this family had gone crazy.

As a member of the Huff family and the youngest daughter who was least likely to lie, if Jenny did and said something, it would still be very easy to influence the villagers' judgment.

This made Shiler think of one thing, which was that Madeline's notebook said that the monsters among these anomalies had intelligence, and could even be said to be very cunning.

These monsters may not all have powerful skills, but they can completely rely on their intangible existence and evil wisdom to run humans around in circles; Jenny looks as if she has been bewitched by a demon.

If it really was a monster that first possessed Jenny, leading the Huff family to kill each other, and after Jenny died, it possessed someone else, then who would this person be?

"Is that corpse in the first-floor security room the lighthouse keeper?" Shiler looked at Batman and asked.

Batman nodded and said, "He should have been killed by an outside intruder."

"No, that's not right." Shiler said, "He was not killed by the madman in the video."

"Then who was it?"

"It should be Huff." Shiler continued, "After the Huff family was released, Huff first killed his other family members, or in the process of them killing each other, only Huff survived."

"Then he perhaps wanted to leave here, or perhaps his spirit was stimulated, and when he arrived at the first floor, he killed the lighthouse keeper, but was also bitten by his dog."

The main reason Shiler inferred this was the wound on Huff's leg, because he had fought with those dogs and was familiar with the size and attack style of hunting dogs; the scar on Huff's leg must have been left by a hunting dog, which proved that he had a conflict with the dog owner.

Batman frowned. If this was really the case, there was another possibility, which was that the monster possessed the little girl Jenny, leading the Huff family to kill each other, and after Jenny died, it possessed Huff, letting Huff go and kill the lighthouse keeper.

And Huff lived until he met Shiler and the others, and he eventually died, and after he died, the monster would definitely find a new host.

When Huff died, the entire team was present, which meant this cunning monster could be in anyone.

"Do you think it can influence us?" Batman asked.

"I think the monster should not have the ability to communicate directly." Shiler said, "After all, it is not a demon from myths and legends that has to rely on chatting with people to influence others. Otherwise, it wouldn't have chosen a little girl as a host, because children's thinking and communication skills are not as good as adults', and persuading them to perfectly execute a certain thing is actually more difficult."

"You mean the monster can directly influence thinking?"

Shiler nodded.

"This is a bit troublesome."

After Batman finished this sentence, he found Shiler looking at him with a slightly puzzled gaze.

"What's troublesome?" Shiler asked.

"The person who might be influenced might not even know they are being influenced themselves." Batman explained, "They might subconsciously do evil things."

Shiler looked at him, wanting to say something but stopping, and finally said.

"But in this team, besides you, who else has room to fall?" ===== CHAPTER 3179 =====